CI/CD Security: An Overview

Overview

There are contrasting approaches to CI security and CD security. While CI allows flexibility for developers to experiment with different tools and methods to transform source code into artifacts, CD standardizes the process to ensure the secure and reliable deployment of these artifacts into production environments. This distinction underscores the importance of maintaining a cohesive "chain of custody," verifying that the artifact tested and signed off in CI is the same one that proceeds through CD stages and eventually lands in production.

What is CI/CD?

Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) are essential practices in modern software development. They aim to automate and streamline the software release process.

Continuous Integration (CI) involves developers frequently integrating code changes into a shared repository. Each integration is automatically verified by an automated build and test process, allowing teams to detect and address issues early. The primary goal of CI is to enhance code quality and reduce integration problems by ensuring that new code changes do not break the existing codebase.

Continuous Delivery (CD) builds upon CI by automating the deployment process to production environments. This practice ensures that code changes that pass automated tests can be released into production at any time with minimal manual intervention. CD's main aim is to make deployments predictable and reliable, thus reducing the risk associated with releasing new features and updates​​.

Both practices contribute to faster development cycles, improved collaboration, continuous feedback, reduced risk, and enhanced scalability and flexibility of software development processes​.

What are common CI/CD security challenges?

Common CI/CD security and governance challenges include the following:

1. Manual and Standalone Processes: Security scans are often executed manually and independently outside the CI/CD pipelines. This separation can lead to delayed vulnerability detection and increased risk of security issues making it to production.
2. Delayed Feedback Loops: Security testing traditionally occurs late in the development cycle, often just before deployment. This timing can delay the identification of vulnerabilities, requiring developers to revisit and fix code they have moved past, thereby hampering development velocity.
3. Siloed Visibility: Using multiple disparate tools for different types of security scans can reduce overall visibility into the application's security posture. This fragmentation makes it difficult to understand vulnerabilities and their severity comprehensively.
4. Inconsistent Governance: Without a unified approach to where and how security scans should be integrated within the CI/CD pipeline, security policies can be applied inconsistently, leading to gaps in security coverage and governance.
5. Complexity and Toil: Managing security outputs from various tools is complex and labor-intensive. Normalizing data, deduplicating results, and prioritizing vulnerabilities require significant effort and coordination between development and security teams.
6. Standardization and Enforcement: Standardizing security policies across different teams and ensuring consistent application is challenging. Automated enforcement of these policies within the CI/CD pipelines is crucial to maintaining security without slowing down development.

Why is CI/CD important to DevSecOps?

CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) is crucial for DevSecOps because it seamlessly integrates security practices into the software development lifecycle, enhancing both development speed and security. Here's why CI/CD is important to DevSecOps:

1. Automation of Security Tests: CI/CD pipelines allow for automated security testing, which ensures that security checks are an integral part of the development process rather than an afterthought. Automated tools can run various security scans and tests (such as static code analysis, vulnerability scanning, and compliance checks) every time code changes are made, ensuring that potential security issues are caught early and continuously​​.
2. Shifting Security Left: By integrating security early in the development process, often referred to as "shifting left," CI/CD helps identify and fix security issues at an earlier stage, reducing the cost and complexity of fixes. This early intervention supports a proactive rather than a reactive security stance​.
3. Continuous Monitoring and Feedback: CI/CD pipelines provide continuous feedback on security issues, allowing developers to address vulnerabilities as soon as they are identified. This continuous monitoring helps maintain a high-security standard throughout the development process and prevents security debt from accumulating​​.
4. Governance and Compliance: CI/CD platforms, like those provided by Harness, incorporate governance and compliance features that enforce security policies throughout the development lifecycle. These features ensure that all code complies with organizational security standards and regulatory requirements, which is crucial for maintaining secure and compliant software​​.
5. Collaboration Between Teams: DevSecOps emphasizes collaboration between development, security, and operations teams. CI/CD pipelines facilitate this by providing a shared platform where all teams can work together, ensuring that security is everyone's responsibility and that it is integrated into all stages of development and deployment​.

By incorporating these practices, CI/CD pipelines help organizations deliver secure software more efficiently, aligning with the core principles of DevSecOps to create a culture where security is a shared responsibility. This integration supports the overall goal of delivering robust, secure, and compliant applications at high velocity.​

How do you secure a CI/CD pipeline?

Securing a CI/CD pipeline involves several critical steps to ensure the integrity, security, and compliance of the software delivery process. The following practices are essential:

1. Secret Management
   • Use tools like HashiCorp Vault to manage static and dynamic secrets securely. Ensure that secrets are rotated regularly and obfuscated during deployment​.
2. Security Testing
   • Integrate security testing early in the CI/CD pipeline (shift-left security). This includes running security scans on code repositories and containers and automating security tests to detect vulnerabilities early​.
3. Access Control
   • Implement granular Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to limit who can make changes to the pipeline and deploy code. Ensure that only authorized personnel have access to critical components of the CI/CD pipeline​.
4. Monitoring and Logging
   • Maintain comprehensive logging and monitoring of the CI/CD pipeline to detect any unusual or unauthorized activities. Utilize these logs to perform audits and compliance checks​​.
5. Vulnerability Management
   • Automate vulnerability scanning and ensure that identified vulnerabilities are promptly addressed. Tools integrated with the CI/CD pipeline can help prioritize and deduplicate security findings to focus on critical issues​.
6. Compliance and Governance
   • Use centralized governance templates and policies to enforce security and compliance requirements across the pipeline. Ensure that the CI/CD pipeline adheres to industry standards and regulatory requirements​.

Implementing these strategies can significantly enhance the security posture of your CI/CD pipeline and ensure a more robust and secure software delivery lifecycle.

How Harness can help

Harness recommends establishing a baseline of trust using frameworks like OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) and SLSA. These frameworks provide guidelines and standards to mitigate common security risks in CI/CD pipelines, ensuring robust security measures across software delivery cycles.

Harness integrates seamlessly with multiple security scanning tools such as Wiz, Snyk, and Semgrep. Harness supports various scanning methodologies, including static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), and container scanning. The platform’s unified dashboard allows teams to view comprehensive scan results, facilitating quick identification and remediation of vulnerabilities. AI-driven recommendations further enhance the remediation process by providing actionable insights to developers, ensuring rapid response to security threats.

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Harness addresses the challenge of securely integrating cloud-hosted builds with on-premises resources through the Secure Connect feature, which creates a secure tunnel, minimizing exposure to potential security risks.

Harness also supports granular role-based access control (RBAC), audit trails, and policy-as-code mechanisms to enforce security and compliance in CI/CD pipelines. Open Policy Agent (OPA) integration allows organizations to define and automate security policies across pipelines, ensuring consistent adherence to security standards and regulatory requirements.

The Harness CI Cloud environment is designed to isolate build processes, preventing any potential influence between runs. The hosted containerized step in Harness CI restricts build steps to access the provenance key information in compliance with SLSA specifications. At the time of writing this blog post, Harness is the only vendor that supports achieving the SLSA L3 v1.0 standard.

The following webinar discusses details of CI/CD security and how Harness can help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-X0JYJtBW8